Sinter machine with raised center rail crash deck



K. REINFELD June 19, 1962 SINTER MACHINE WITH RAISED CENTER RAIL CRASH DECK 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 Filed Aug. 28, 1959 IPIIIII.

Jack

67' roads 5.7.

June 19, 1962 K. REINFELD 3,039,756

- SINTER MACHINE WITH RAISED CENTER RAIL CRASH DECK Filed Aug. 28, 1959 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 INVENTOR. KURT P5INFEL. 0.

67 7' rod? LY.

yam am United States Patent Filed Aug. 23, 1959, Ser. No. 836,815 2 Claims. (Cl. 26621) This invention relates generally to endless strand continuous sintering machines, and more particularly, to an improvement in the crash deck section thereof, whereby to promote quicker and more efiicient digestion of the sinter by the breaker or crusher and to lessen the chance of having sinter pile up in the chute ahead of the breaker wheel or crusher at the discharge return bend end of the sintering machine.

In these sintering plants, and more lately, those of the larger size machines designed for sintering pelletized ore, the sinter cakes often do not break up into small enough pieces as they strike the crash deck and, as a consequence, the breaker wheel or crusher is often overburdened in crushing the larger pieces of sinter cake from the crash deck and large chunks tend to accumulate in the chute, blocking the entrance of further cakes from the sintering machine, thus requiring slowing down of the latter. The mechanism for continuously breaking or shattering of these sinter cakes for the crusher usually is constituted of rails or bars supported on beams on an incline toward the breaker wheel or crusher with the tops of the rails or bars all in a single plane to facilitate gravity flow of uniformly large fragments suitable to ready crushing by the breaker wheel or crusher. Often, however, the nature of the cake is such as it brealm off from the sinter bed where the pallets pass around the return bend at the discharge end of the machine, that the force of the fall on the crash deck is insufiicient to shatter the cakes to the size suitable for crushing, but leave fragments or chunks so large that they do not readily enter the breaker wheel or crusher, and jam the chute to the breaker Wheel or crusher.

The principal object of the present improvement is the provision of a very simple but effective means to insure the breaking or shattering of such cakes by the crash deck to the normal size for crushing by the breaker wheel without jamming the chute, and which will permit faster operation of the breaker or crusher wheel with the fragments of cake of the nature which ordinarily is readily grasped and crushed by the breaker wheel without chance of jamming, as aforesaid. The means employed for this purpose is of simple construction and at nominal cost, and suitable for operation at various speeds of the sinter strand, both with large and smaller size cakes as may be made from time to time on the sintering machine.

Accordingly, the crash deck is provided with a raised breaker member, preferably in the form of solely a single raised rail, in the center of the crash deck and disposed in a direction lengthwise of the sintering strand at an elevation above the rest of the single plane of the top of the rest of the crash deck.

The provision of a crash deck as aforesaid is of general utility with sinter strand machines in which the crusher wheel is in line with the sintering strand, as in the case of combined sintering and cooler strands in straight line end-to-end relation, and is of special utility and advantage with sintering machines in which the crusher or breaker is at an angle, such as a right angle, to the length of the sintering machine to deliver the crushed sinter to a cooler or conveyor along a line at an angle to the direction of movement and delivery of the sintering strand. In such machines, to conserve space, the turn of the sinter cake from the sinter strand is often made to take place in the 3,039,756 Patented June 19, 1962 crash deck area before the crusher. This entails the use of inclined upper and lower crash decks at angles to each other. As a result of the turning of the cake fragments, as they leave the upper deck, often large fragments pile up in a manner to jam the flow from the sinter strand to the breaker or crusher wheel. The provision of a raised rail, solely at the center line of the upper inclined crash deck, has been found to greatly lessen the chances of having the sinter pile up ahead of the breaker wheel, and the breaking or shattering of the sinter cake by the upper deck, with such raised rail in conjunction with the tops of the rails of the remainder of the deck being still in their usual lower single plane, has been found to also promote quicker and more efiicient digestion of the sinter by the breaker or crusher wheel.

Gther objects and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following description and claims:

The accompanying drawings show, for purpose of exemplification, the best mode of embodying the invention wherein:

FIG. 1 is a transverse vertical cross-sectional view through the crash deck chute area at the discharge end of an endless strand sintering machine, illustrating the improved crash deck of the invention;

FIG. 2 is a top plan view of the same;

FIG. 3 is a vertical cross-sectional view illustrating in detail the support for the raised rail in the crash deck.

Referring to the drawings, the invention is applied to a sintering machine 10 of known type, in which the sinter cake must be turned to move along a path as it breaks off from the rest of the cakes in the pallets still on the sinter strand, to be crushed, screened and then delivered to storage. The machine 10 is what is known as the Dwight and Lloyd Continuously Operating Machine, illustrated in Patent No. 2,367,063 of January 9, 1945, but contains instead, at the discharge end 11, a dust hood chute 12 designed for turning the cakes 90 at the return bend end of the sinter strand where the hood receives the sinter cake as it breaks off from the rest of the sinter in pallets still on the upper strand 28. Within the hood 12 there is provided an inclined upper crash deck 13 and an inclined lower crash deck 14 with the upper deck extending crosswise of the strand, and the lower deck 14 extending lengthwise to receive the fragments from the upper deck and discharge them crosswise thereof to breaker wheel 15 over a grid of breaker bars 16, through which the crushed sinter cake is discharged while still hot to a screen 17. The fines from the decks 13, 14 gravitate to the breaker grid 16 and also pass therethrough to the screen 17.

The fines flow down through the screen 17 to hopper 18, whereas the larger pieces of sinter flow over the screen to a chute 19 which delivers them either to yard storage, or a conveyor or cooler for the hot sinter.

The breaker wheel in general comprises a series of side-by-side sets of blades 20 on a rotatable shaft 21, each blade passing through the spaces between the bars 16 of the grid, thus crushing or breaking the sinter pieces between the blades 20 and bars 16.

The crash deck, likewise, consists of a series of spaced parallel bars or rails 22, but unlike the grid or breaker bars 16, the crash deck does not act as a screen, but as a chute, for fines that may pass between their rails 22. These rails 22 are, instead, all mounted in parallel relation transversely of the width of the decks on a flat plate 23 which is supported by beams 24. The tops of the rails of each of the decks 13, 14, are all disposed, as conventionally in a single plane 25.

In accordance with the present invention, the center rail 26 of the upper deck 13 is mounted on a secondary beam 27 disposed on top of the flat plate 23 to raise the center rail 26 above the top single plane 25 of the tops of the rest or remainder of the rails in the upper deck 13, so that larger sinter cakes strike it first, thus breaking or shattering the cakes as they fall from the upper strand to a greater number of smaller pieces in conjunction with the shattering that occurs when the rest of the cakes strike the tops of the rest of the rails at a lower level in the deck 13.

The rails in the deck 13 are progressively shortened, as shown, in this embodiment, merely to get better distribution all the way across the lower deck 14.

In operation, as the pallets '29 round the return bend, the cake breaks off from the cake in the next pallet 2 and falls onto the upper inclined deck 13. Upon striking the upper deck 13, the cake shatters into more numerous smaller pieces as a result of the initial resistance of the single raised rail 26 intermediate the ends of the cake, which may be six or more feet long. The broken pieces slide down onto the rest of the deck area 14, in the embodiment shown on the lower inclined deck, and reach the blades 20 of the breaker 15. Due to the greater number of normal size pieces, the rotatable breaker 15 is not unduly burdened with pieces too large to be grasped by the knives or blades 20' As a consequence, the breaker wheel 15 may be run at a higher rate of speed with full load, thus avoiding jamming in the hood 12, and with quicker and more eflicient digestion of the cake, with better and greater continuity in sintering and cooling of the screened sinter cake.

The invention as hereinabove set forth is embodied in chine comprising: an endless strand of sinter pallets, a hood at the discharge end of the strand for receiving the sinter cakes as they break off from the strand at the discharge end thereof, an inclined crash deck in said hood spaced below said discharge end whereby said sinter cakes fall by gravity and crash forcefully against said crash deck for shattering the cakes and guiding the pieces thereof, and in which the crash deck comprises a deck of the width of the sinter strand with a plurality of spaced stationary breaker members having their tops all in a single plane crosswise of the entire Width of the deck and a single raised stationary breaker memberat an elevation higher than said single plane and disposed transversely of the width of the deck at the crosswise center thereof, whereby when said cakes fall through said hood and onto said crash deck, they fall upon all of the breaker members including the raised stationary breaker member, and thereby said cakes are broken into smaller pieces.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said single raised stationary breaker member is of greater width than the remainder of said spaced stationary breaker members.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 621,274 OKcefe Mar. 14, 1899 2,367,063 Shallock Jan. 9, 1945 2,578,426 Holmberg Dec. 11, 1951 

